If Christopher had only ever been cold, only ever been cruel, I could have filed him neatly away and healed cleanly.

But he wasn’t.

He had been warm, and funny, and tender; he had held my hand and made me laugh; and he was also the same man who stood in a hallway and let a lock click shut while I lay helpless in the dark.

Both were real.

That is the thing no one warns you about — that the people who do terrible things are almost never monsters in a costume you can spot across a room.

They are people with real warmth and real kindness who, when the moment comes, choose wrongly, and keep choosing wrongly, while telling themselves the warmth still makes them good.